Working with Partners

Last week I talked about literature circles, it turns out no one in my class got a good score on their literature circle, so to make us work harder the teachers had us work with partners. Each person would do exactly half the work, as marked by different colour fonts, though if your partner messed up, your grade went down as well. This was meant as an incentive to get our partners to work harder and turn out better work. I welcomed the fact that I would do less work but I did not like the idea that if my partner messed up I went down to, as I had got a pretty good grade on the previous literature circle.

Pros

Work Together

I guess there were a few pros. The first of which I have mentioned already: I had to do less work, and this meant I could concentrate more on the parts that I was doing more than I usually could. Another is - though I didn't get to do much of this - was that we got to comment on each other’s work and improve it. Apparently the teacher had chosen our groups based on our strengths in different areas of the literature circle. This meant there were specific areas in which we helped each other. I, for example, was relatively good at forming questions, while my partner was good at descriptive language, which was rather useful in this project. We also gained new perspectives on the novel, which helped with our thinking and therefore our writing. 

Obstacles

We encountered a few obstacles which, when we worked together, were easy to overcome. Obstacles such as this: on the first day I forgot my book so I needed my partner to give me ideas on which I could elaborate. She did this, but I found that doing a literature circle on a book I have never read is something very hard to do. Another thing was that the question I posed was a simple question, but I had posed it in a rather complicated manner. My partner helped me simplify the language of my question and thereby got us a better grade.

A new understanding?

Did I gain a new view of this novel?

Yes, I think I did. My partner’s reading skills picked up on intricacies in the novel that I had not noticed. Many of these things told you a lot about the book, and things which explained the way the main character acted. These details also covered many things which the author may have implied. Next time I do a literature circle I will try to read the book in a way in which I can pick up details like my partner did.

This is

AlexK

Signing out

A Discussion

A few days ago, a few of my classmates and I had a discussion about a book called Julie of the Wolves. We had all prepared for the discussion, writing "literature circles" about the book. Literature circles are our opinions of what is going on in the book. In this discussion we were supposed to get new perspectives on the book. Just to give you a bit of background information, this book is about an Eskimo girl, living in Alaska, called Miyax, who runs away from her mean child husband Daniel hoping to make it to San Francisco where her pen pal lives. Along the way she gets lost and is stuck in the Alaskan wilderness. She joins a pack of wolves, hoping to survive among them as part of their pack.

How did this discussion help me understand the book?

This discussion gave me several new takes on the book which I had not thought of. These opinions were very well thought out and the people who had offered them had evidence taken from the book to support them. Though I disagreed with several of them, I still understood what they were talking about and how it seemed they had come to this conclusion. These new perspectives on the book gave me a new way to think about the book as I move on to the next part I must read.

Connections

My group made several connections between the things that happened in the book and stuff that happened that affected us or that we had heard about. Quite a few of these connections had to do with the social fabric of the wolf pack and its similarities to some human situations, such as school and within politics.

Predictions

We had no predictions as such, but there was definitely something which I think all of us agreed might happen. It was this: there will be some sort of friction going on involving Amaroq, the chief wolf. Amaroq seemed something of an enigma to all of us and he also seemed rather unpredictable. This, we think, will lead to a sort of relationship gone wrong between him and one of the other wolves, or even Miyax. We also think that Amaroq might have some sort of hidden agenda which he may use to secure his power beyond doubt.
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This is
AlexK
Signing out